New LED street lighting coming to South Pittsburgh business districts

Things will be a little brighter in some South Pittsburgh neighborhoods with the conversion of High Pressure Sodium (HPS) streetlights to Light-Emitting Diode (LED) lights.

The city has begun the conversion of 3,148 streetlights to the energy efficient LED lights, saving taxpayers approximately $110,000 per year in reduced energy and maintenance costs.

South Pittsburgh area business districts receiving the upgrade and the number of LED streetlights are: Allentown (11), Carrick (103), Knoxville (84), Mount Washington (41), and, South Side (183). Downtown will also see 774 of the new brighter high efficiency lights installed.

The city operates approximately 40,000 streetlights that use roughly 2.3 million kilowatt hours of electricity annually at a cost of $3.2 million.@The 31 neighborhood businesses district getting the LED lights is first of four phases in the city's efforts to convert all 40,000 streetlights to greener and more inexpensive LED.

The Phase 1 conversion is scheduled to be completed by the end of February.